"...to make up for lost revenue because a weak economy has cut into tax collections, state and local governments are encouraging officers to be less forgiving.

It's not an unusual response to economic problems. And among the evidence to back up that claim is a 2009 paper published in The Journal of Law & Economics, in which researchers reported that 'significantly more tickets are issued in the year following a decline in (tax) revenue' -- and that 'the issuance of traffic tickets does not decline in years following revenue increases.'"